FROM THIS EPISODE

Six years after the Great Recession, the housing market is finally in "recovery." But it's still hard to buy a new home. Wall Street has snapped up foreclosed houses at rock-bottom prices and converted them into rentals. We hear about that and other reasons why "recovery" is not what it used to be. Also, Libya braces for civil war, and new evidence that dogs can think, talk and play by the rules.

Libya has seen increasing violence since the long-time strongman Moammar Gadhafi was killed three years ago. This weekend, some 72 people were killed, and the nation appears to be on the brink of a major conflict. Saudi Arabia and Turkey has closed embassies and evacuated personnel. The US is reportedly watching the situation "minute by minute." Borzou Daragahi is in Cairo for the Financial Times.

The home foreclosure crisis staggered the US economy and led to the Great Recession six years ago. Now — finally -- new housing is under construction. But it's not single-family homes that are going up, but mostly apartment buildings. And Wall Street is going into the rental business. Meantime, many homeowners, especially blacks and Latinos, are still underwater. What does this new form of housing "recovery" reveal about the economy? Does it contain the seeds of another recession?

In the mid-1800's, Charles Darwin postulated that dogs could think and even communicate with each other, guided by certain rules of morality. Other scientists scoffed at the idea until a recent, serious study of dogs at play. It turns out that dogs recognize honesty and deceit, show compassion, and ostracize other dogs that don't play by the rules. In some ways, they outsmart our closest relatives — chimpanzees. That's according to a new field of animal research, discussed in Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs. The author is David Grimm, deputy news editor at Science magazine.